Reason and Romance

When I closed the final page of Tom Stoppard's Arcadia eight years ago, time slowed. My head spun with more ideas than I could handle. Heartache crawled up the back of my throat. For the first time, I was able to see that what is in our heads can also be in our hearts, and the more relentless we are as thinkers, the more relentlessly we can love. Arcadia takes place in both the early 1800s and 2004. Hannah Jarvis and Bernard Nightingale are a modern-day pair of scholars independently visiting the estate of a landed aristocratic British family. Hannah seeks to unveil the identity of the Hermit of Sidley Park, while Bernard attempts to peg a murder he believes to have happened at the estate on none other than Lord Byron. Hannah and Bernard's scenes alternate with those involving a youthful tutor (Septimus Hodge) and his charge (Thomasina Coverly) from the time period Bernard and Hannah are studying.

The enormity of Arcadia is staggering. Stoppard takes on literature, science, mathematics, and philosophy; he questions predestination and the nature of God; he dramatically pits intellectual rivals against each other and effortlessly stirs up an engrossing narrative of graceful simplicity.

Every scene contains a core dramatic arc that shouldn't be hard to play correctly. Stoppard's dialogue is ferociously intellectual but full of nuances, wit, and beauty. He uses an enormous aristocratic estate as his setting and allows the play's action to bandy between two centuries. In short, he outdoes himself.

Against such magnitude, Invisible City Theatre Company's (ICTC) production is startlingly intimate. The ensemble is working in a very tiny space with crisp design elements. Rather than admiring the morning room of Sidley Park from afar, the audience is in it. In this space, with these people, it is impossible to avoid succumbing to the quickly paced frenzy of ideas, impossible not to feel as though we are part of the fabric of that world.

Kudos to ICTC for having the courage to mount this gigantic play in such a tiny space; their decision is counterintuitive, but it pays off magnificently. Rather than observe arguments, we are enveloped in them. And as Bernard, Hannah, and Valentine Coverly (Avery Clark), a graduate student studying mathematics, assert, the arguing itself is trivial, but the passions that drive the arguing are the reasons we live.

ICTC turns out a uniformly well-acted show: sound ensemble acting with intelligent, heady, passionate performances all around. Actors go to school so they will have the chops to play Septimus, should the opportunity arise. Adam Devine gets under Septimus's skin and does not look back; he's rakish and heartbreaking and totally swoon-worthy. Christine Albright's Thomasina is precocious, brilliant and innocent. The delicacy of their relationship is heightened by the restraint in David Epstein's direction. Rebecca Miller's Hannah and David Ian Lee's Bernard are delightful contemporary contrasts

With Its 'Heart' on Its Sleeve

First, a confession. I missed three performances of The Hasty Heart in a row before I finally saw it. I nearly missed it entirely. The loss, clearly, would have been mine.

The Keen Company and director Jonathan Silverstein have assembled a cast of impressive talent and let them loose. The group has an old-soldier ease, the familiarity of an Elks lodge during happy hour. Their interactions are so affectionate and look so much fun that I was tempted to join, to get out of my seat and play solitaire with the boys.

John Patrick's The Hasty Heart takes place in a British Army hospital in South Asia, during the waning days of the Second World War. We see a single wing with six beds, occupied by five soldiers from the disparate colonies (and former colonies) of the Empire: the gentle Blossom (Chris Chalk), an African native who speaks little and understands less; compulsive gambler Kiwi (Paul Swinnerton), from New Zealand; the stuttering American, Yank (Chris Hutchison); tubby Englishman Tommy (Anthony Manna); and Digger (Brian Sgambati), the Australian.

One bed is empty, to be occupied by Lachie (Keith Nobbs), a Scottish soldier dying of kidney failure. He has, at most, a few weeks left, and the stuffy Colonel (Stephen Bradbury) asks the raucous men and their lovely nurse (Emily Donahoe) to look after him. A dying man, he says, should have some friends by his side.

There is just one problem

A Gay Fantasia on Karate Themes

Do you remember a time when pegged stonewashed jeans, Converse shoes, and crane kicks were all the rage? The Four Corners Project sure does, as it attempts to breathe new life into a 1980s film classic in It

So, What is a Coolidge Dollar?

"You're the top! You're an Arrow collar! / You're the top! You're a Coolidge dollar!" What the heck is an Arrow collar?

With a basic education in U.S. history, you can take a stab at Coolidge dollar, but you would have to be a fashion historian, or 90 years old, to know what an Arrow collar is.

Legendary composer and songwriter, Cole Porter, encapsulated the popular culture of his time. Take a song like "You're the Top," and you can identify exactly what this country was obsessed with in 1934: everything from the marvels of science and advertising ("You're cellophane; you're Pepsodent") to public works ("You're the Dam at Boulder; you're the National Gallery"), with politicians and pop stars thrown in between. By all rights, songs like this one should now be quaint anachronisms, but they still sound so fresh today you get right into them, even if you do not know what they mean.

To hear Cole Porter performed both live and lively is reason enough to go see Anything Goes, a production of the Heights Players, the oldest theater company in Brooklyn. For nearly 50 years, this company of local talent has offered eclectic and challenging seasons of works ranging from fervent to farce, in a little theater in the half-round with actors and audience almost cheek-to-jowl. The challenge for the troupe this time was to take a musical whose book is a less-than-quaint anachronism and make it entertaining enough to tolerate while waiting for the next immortal song. And they actually pull it off.

The story, a Gilbert-and-Sullivan-type shipboard contrivance of disguises and wrong matches made right at the end, is just a fluffy little platform for a collection of Porter at his best, songs that, by now, need no platform at all. People may have found such devices amusing in 1934, but it is hard to do so now. The dialogue is barely witty, the characters flat, and the plot stereotypical. All the more challenge for a director to overcome these handicaps, and Steve Velardi has done an admirable job.

Given the restrictions of the original book by Guy Bolton, PG Wodehouse, Howard Lindsay, and Russel Crouse, the acting was admirable too. Erika White as the blowsy, boozing singer Reno Sweeney - the part played by Ethel Merman in the 1934 Broadway production and subsequent 1936 movie - gives a gutsy if not lusty performance and belts out a good tune. Her fellow lead, Zachary Scott Abramowitz as the ingenuous but resourceful Wall Street lackey Billy Crocker, is not able to rise above the insipidity of the script and does not have the vocal range or power to do justice to Porter's romantic masterpieces "Easy to Love" and "All Through the Night."

Alea Vorillas as Billy's true love Hope Harcourt, sings touchingly but acts blandly, while Raymond Adams as her fianc

An Amazonian Tale

Federico Restrepo and his Loco 7 Troupe

I Heart Freestyle

The great thing about writing reviews for improv shows is that one can never spoil the plot. Because the performance is different every time, one can expound upon the tiny details of the night's show without worrying that too much would be given away. Everything in Freestyle Love Supreme is inspired by the audience's suggestions, and the shockingly talented lyrical artists and musicians use their skills to take those suggestions to the limit, with hilarious results. Comedy improv is a form of theater made popular by groups like Chicago City Limits and the television show Whose Line is it Anyway?. Freestyle Love Supreme is in the same vein, but adds the element of music into the mix

Love: Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

The

The Imperfect Storm

It is a rare thing when every single part of a show

On the Sweet Side

One-man shows are the bastard children of the theater world. With choice topics like cancer, divorce, stillborn babies, and the difficulties of dating when you are a 30-something Jewish woman, this is not surprising. My friends would rather stay home and watch America

Your Mom

Wrestling, punching, kicking, fighting, drinking, cussing, having sex...Winter Miller's The Penetration Play is full of aggressive alpha-male machismo from start to finish. The play's main characters Rain and Ash are in a constant state of competition, bullying each other, smacking each other around, and even spitting in each other's faces in a constant power struggle. Sound like too much testosterone for you to handle? Well, it isn't. Rain and Ash are girls. And the only other character to grace the stage is Maggie, Ash's mother. Sure, there is talk about Ash's newly re-discovered boyfriend, Rich, as well as some discussion about her father, Bill. But all things phallic are surprisingly absent from a play whose title might lead one to think about, well, all things phallic.

At the onset of the play, Rain and Ash jog into Ash's family's beach house. Ash begins looking for her parents, and Rain bets, "...they're having hot sex in the attic." Rain goes on to mimic traditionally male sexual motions even after Ash assures her that her parents have not had sex since "...Nixon was shredding tape."

This sex talk leads them almost immediately to begin talking about Rich, an old flame of Ash's that has recently been rekindled. Rain responds at first with casual indifference, then with aggressive disapproval and it becomes clear that Rain is very, very jealous of her best friend's lover. The two girls poke and prod at each other the rest of the first act, testing each other's physical and emotional limits before a truce is called so they can prepare for a night out with Rich.

Rain returns to the beach house early, finding herself incapable of watching the woman she loves make out with a man she loathes. She inadvertently stirs Ash's mom Maggie, who is more than happy to entertain Rain with cheese, wine, and stories of the past (and where her life went wrong). But it is not long before Rain begins to see where Ash's attractive qualities come from. Sex, more sex, and teary-eyed-yet-fiery confrontations ensue. In the end, no character is spared uncertainty and heartbreak.

The dialogue that Winter Miller sets down on the stage for her characters is very conversational, which makes her characters as believable and tangible as anyone I know off-stage. And both the ambiguity and ambivalence present in the play's resolution feel strikingly close to the same emotions present at the end of any relationship I have ever had.

Mia Barron's portrayal of the accidental heartbreaker Ashley is filled with a balance of sexual energy and innocence, making it easy to understand why her best friend (as well as a number of young men) would fall head over heels in love with her.

The set is every bit the upscale Jersey shore beach house it is supposed to be, thanks to scenic designer Robin Vest. Little touches such as ornate wallpaper and the delicately decorated cheese tray really make the world of the play come to life.

Island Hopping

The current production at La MaMa E.T.C. bears some resemblance to its name: ArchipelaGo! could represent some islands off of which you would like to get voted. Constructed in a series of personal vignettes and "performance art" interludes, the hour-long piece recounts fascinating family tales to little effect. The nine-year-old performance group, SLANT, is comprised of three Asian-American men: Richard Ebihara, Wayland Quintero, and Perry Yung. The show begins with a prolonged prelude of white fog billowing under blue and red lights--with the bare-chested, goggle-wearing trio jaggedly slicing the clouds with their flashlights. Then they gather around a circular table and strap on Asian micro-gongs to continue the wordless scene with music. Before long, though, the action gives way to the text and the mystery diffuses with the fog.

Each performer's family hails from an island (or at least spent some time on one). Yung's Chinese grandfather was imprisoned on Angel Island off of the coast of California; Quintero's Filipino family worked on Hawaiian plantations; and Ebihara's forebears ran a diner on Terminal Island in the Pacific until they were forced out with the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII. The stage, then, is literally set with three powerful, personal backgrounds that all Americans (save the Native ones) can connect with as immigrants. The men are physically-fit, apt musicians with a history of explosive, original work as a collective. Perhaps they are resting on their laurels this time around.

Wayland Quintero is a sweet but unsure storyteller, who divulges fond childhood memories of an unmarried Filipino worker who had to pay the famous "ten cents a dance" just to be near a woman. The background is edifying and horrifying: Filipino immigrants, most of whom arrived in Hawaii and California between 1911 and 1920, were not allowed to bring their wives with them to the U.S., and anti-miscegenation laws further prevented them from socializing with white women. Many were left without any companionship or families. Quintero's story is fascinating, but his shaky storytelling is not.

A few scenes later, Richard Ebihara performs an original piano piece about Terminal Island (whose first few notes sound strikingly like Mark Cohn's "Walking In Memphis"). He pauses between verses to tell the story of his grandfather who owned a diner that catered to the early-morning cannery workers, shipyard men and other hard laborers. He was given 48 hours to evacuate when the U.S. government began interning Japanese Americans during WWII. Again, this scene has promise as a history lesson, but never catches fire as a piece of theater.

It is the wiry Perry Yung who finally ushers some magic onto the stage. In a children's show sketch, he creates an ancient shakuhachi flute onstage. Traditionally carved out of bamboo and punctured with a hot stick, this flute is created out of "local" materials: a plastic pipe and a power drill. In the creation of this instrument, Yung captures the history of his heritage and yanks it into a contemporary experience--a swirl of ancient Chinese flutes reverberating with the city subway's warm wind. It is beautiful.

As their seventh original production, ArchipelaGo! was designed for audiences of all ages--a new demographic for SLANT. When they began in 1995, the group's premiere gig was Big Dicks, Asian Men and their repertoire was clearly edgier and more flamboyant. "To adapt to the needs of family-friendly theater," La MaMa explains, "SLANT is a bit heavier on the puppetry and toy monkeys, and light on the language. Gone are the double-entendres." Unfortunately, while letting the kids in, SLANT has let the charisma out.

Don't Bring Grandma

The luminescent blue curtain drops to the ground, revealing a giant cream-colored balloon with the mysterious figure of a woman inside.

The Spread of Burbitis

Think back to the days when you were fresh out of college. New York City was your playground; your friends meant everything to you; and you were ready to change the world. But eventually, you gave up a life filled with recreational drugs and after-hours parties in exchange for aged Bourbon and garden soirees, quit pursuing your passion in order to take on a more sensible job, and moved out of your tiny studio apartment in the Village for a house with a nice piece of property in, dare I say, suburbia. For many people, life is full of these necessary transitions. But what is gained or lost as you move from one stage of your life to the next?

This question is central to D. Clifford Hart

The Beast With Just One Back

If it is not already, it should be well-known that solo performances are tricky. Period. They also tend to be one of the most undesired additions to the theatrical canon. It is difficult enough to get the laymen in your life to see any sort of theater, but if you mention that it is solo performance they tend to ring up excuses faster than if you asked them to help you move into a five-story walk-up. Recently, my friend Andrew attended a mutual friend

Centuries of Forbidden Fruit

Whether it was apples, chestnuts, or crab apples in the stories of the "fall", it was always Eve who started the world

When Absurd Things Happen To Real People

Suspicious Package, true to its title, starts with nothing onstage other than

Girl Power

Women rule (quite literally) in Steven Gridley's Post-Oedipus, an adaptation of Euripides' classic The Phoenician Women. Or at least one woman rules. The woman in question is Jocasta, Queen of Thebes, who begins the play observing a slide show of herself weeping. Striking a pose in imitation of herself, she wails and moans in attempts to find the necessary emotions to deliver her own introductory monologue to the audience. After failing several times, she gives up and calls upon a Messenger to finish the task, which he does to her satisfaction. Then the family is introduced. Ismene, the smart one. Eteocles, the usurper. Polyneices, the self-righteous warrior. Antigone, the sensitive daughter. And finally, Oedipus the shamed and blinded former-king of Thebes. Each one mechanically performs an action appropriate to his or her character as Strauss plays in the background. The family members continue to repeat their actions like skipping records in beautiful syncopation until the Messenger directs the sound designer to cut the music.

For the rest of the play, Eteocles and Polyneices quarrel over the throne, Oedipus attempts to regain his empire through a cockamamie do-it-yourself gumball vending opportunity, the girls struggle to be noticed, and Jocasta attempts to keep the family together, thus keeping Thebes from destruction. Ultimately, Jocasta fails in her mission and her family indulges itself in its pre-destined tragedy.

As the lynchpin of the production, Erin Treadway plays a marvelous Jocasta. Watching her transform from a vainglorious mother who wishes to be remembered for her familial sacrifices to a pathetic wretch driven mad from her losses is truly gut-wrenching. She delivers lines like, "It's odd, but when I look back on it, my life is actually much more fulfilling than it feels," with an incredible mixture of passion and aloofness.

But as the play begins to move away from Ms. Treadway's character, it begins to lose its balance. The side-plot of Oedipus and his gumball scheme succeeds from time to time in bringing some much-appreciated levity to the drama, but for the most part, it merely distracts from the real action. It is also a stretch to believe that the sniveling weasel that Andrew Bloch portrays as Oedipus could ever have been a patriarch capable of slaying a king and defeating the sphinx. Perhaps writer/co-director Steven Gridley and co-director Jacob Titus want to present their audience with a version of Oedipus that differs from the traditional one, but it is a version that I feel is entirely ineffective in garnering pathos from the audience.

The production suffers from other problems as well. The theater itself is lighted almost as brightly as the stage, making it difficult to focus on the story taking place on stage without being constantly aware of the audience. The music starts and stops abruptly too many times, which makes me wonder whether this is a directorial choice or just inexperienced sound design.

At times gothic, others slapstick, and still others melodramatic, the thematic content of Post-Oedipus wanders in too many directions to make any kind of lasting impression about any one issue. Certain directorial decisions seem arbitrary. For instance, some characters seem aware of and others oblivious to the fact that they are, indeed, actors in a play. The brothers Polyneices and Eteocles debate their reasons for wanting the crown of Thebes into microphones in a talk show setting, then one of the microphones is used as a P.A. to address the citizens of Thebes. Eteocles uses a slide projector as a machine gun to kill Polyneices, only to have to face Polyneices in hand-to-hand combat later. The boundaries of the world in which Post-Oedipus takes place are never clearly established, making the events that unfold equally unclear.

The play does create some great moments, including the busy, yet well balanced climax. Kudos to set design assistant Jenny Bonilla for getting the most out of a minimalist set, cleverly using a few sheets and picture frames to create a variety of props. And Karen Allen (no, not that Karen Allen) does a tremendous job evoking laughs while still managing to get lost in the crowd as Ismene, the under-appreciated and constantly ignored member of the family.

Though Post-Oedipus does have its moments, by the end of the play one feels as if he or she has seen a work-in-progress as opposed to a finished production. Some minor changes to the technical aspects of the show would improve it greatly, but only when Steven Gridley and Jacob Titus are able to focus their visions to produce a cohesive theme will the show reach its full potential.

Travelers Forego Pretension Vaccine

Margaret Fuller, a 19th century American intellectual, placed her traveling countrymen in three categories:

Good Taste

Located in the same building as Chelsea Studios, home to the good people of Theaterworks USA and countless auditions for touring musical companies of former Broadway shows is hidden a small but cared for jewel called the T. Schreiber Studio. All one has to do is look at the plaques on the walls to realize that commitment to a craft is paramount here. One plaque is from former Vice President Al Gore, thanking Mr. Schreiber for his more than 30 years in the service of downtown New York theater. Another plaque from former mayor Rudolph Guiliani declares January 25, 1999,